YouTube Transcript Keyword Search — Find Topics Inside Videos

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What does YouTube Transcript Keyword Search do?

YouTube Transcript Keyword Search lets you search inside YouTube video transcripts for any keyword or phrase. Give it a list of video URLs and a search term — it finds exactly which videos mention the keyword and at which timestamps, returning matched segments with surrounding context.

This is ideal for podcast research, competitive intelligence, academic analysis, or building topic-specific video indexes — on the Apify platform.

Why use YouTube Transcript Keyword Search?

• Find topics inside videos — locate the exact moment a keyword is mentioned
• Batch search across many videos — check hundreds of URLs in one run
• Context snippets — see the text before and after each match for full context
• Timestamp precision — jump directly to the relevant moment in any video
• Research at scale — index video content for search engines, databases, or analytics tools

How to use YouTube Transcript Keyword Search

1. Open the Actor and click Try for free
2. Add YouTube video URLs to the videoUrls field
3. Enter your search keyword or phrase in the keyword field
4. Click Start — results appear in seconds
5. Download matched segments as JSON or CSV

Input

{
"videoUrls":[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bZkp7q19f0"
],
"keyword":"machine learning",
"language":"en"
}

Output

Each match record contains the video, the matched text, timestamp, and surrounding context.

{
"videoId":"9bZkp7q19f0",
"videoUrl":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bZkp7q19f0",
"keyword":"machine learning",
"match":"machine learning models can now",
"start":143.2,
"duration":3.1,
"context":"...this is how machine learning models can now predict outcomes with..."
}

Output fields

Cost

Pay-per-result pricing:

Tips

• Use this Actor after YouTube Search Scraper to first find relevant video URLs, then search inside them
• Case-insensitive matching is used by default — no need to worry about capitalization
• For broad topic coverage, search multiple keyword variants in separate runs
• Export results to a spreadsheet to build a reference database of timestamped video quotes

FAQ

What if a video has no transcript? Videos without captions are skipped and noted in the output with an error field.

Is the keyword search case-sensitive? No — matching is case-insensitive.

Can I search for multi-word phrases? Yes — enter the full phrase in the keyword field.

Is this Actor maintained? Yes. Report bugs or feature requests in the Issues tab.

Need help or have questions? Open an issue in the Issues tab or reach out on Discord: maged03211